BETWEEN CLASSES Faculty Life at Truman High      During the 1980-81 school year, Charles Bruckerhoff conducted an intensive ethnographic study of the teachers in the social studies department at Truman High School. He followed them from the classroom to the locker room, from homeroom to living room in order to better define the relationship between the informal activity of teachers and school organization. Between Classes: Faculty Life at Truman High is the product of this research.      As Louis M. Smith notes in the foreword, the book is " ...a naturalistic account of faculty life...Foreshadowed problems are how teachers make teaching livable in the workplace, how they interrelate with each other and their administrators, their department heads and principals." Some discoveries prove quite shocking. The way the administration treats the teachers is not unlike the way it treats the students. The uneasy dichotomy this situation creates for the staff manifest itself in various ways: subtle rebellions in the form of "escapes," childish games and pranks, and most significantly, the formation of two rival cliques, "Academics" and "Coaches," that vie for control of the curriculum. While this behavior is sometimes understandable given the faculty's limited position in the school's organization, these informal roles tend to adversely affect the teachers' formal roles.      Between Classes: Faculty Life at Truman High outlines in detail the complex patterns of interaction that exist among faculty, administration, students and community. Although it is a detailed look at one school, it provokes questions about broad underlying issues such as school policy, school reorganization, and the socialization of teachers.      This volume will be of tremendous value to preservice and inservice teachers and administrators as well as to students of sociology of education.      Charles Bruckerhoff is President of Curriculum Research and Evaluation, Inc.
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